Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, byname AMLO, (born November 13, 1953, Villa de Tepetitán, Tabasco, Mexico), centre-left populist Mexican politician who served as head of the Federal District government (2000–05) and ran unsuccessfully for president of Mexico in 2006 and 2012.

During the 1990s López Obrador earned a national reputation for organizing grassroots protests against environmental damage in Tabasco caused by the state-owned Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) and electoral fraud committed by the “official” PRI (most notably involving the 1994 Tabasco gubernatorial race, which he lost to 2005–06 PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo Pintado). From 1996 to 1999 López Obrador served as national president of the PRD, a position he used both to promote grassroots party organization and to recruit prominent PRI members as PRD mayoral and gubernatorial candidates. In 2000 he was elected head of the Federal District government, a post he held through July 2005, when he resigned to seek the PRD’s presidential nomination.

López Obrador compiled a generally successful record as head of Mexico City’s government. Under the slogan “For the good of all, the poor first,” he promoted a series of innovative social and cultural programs—including old-age pensions, financial support for single mothers and the unemployed, substantial investments in urban redevelopment and transportation infrastructure, and educational outreach programs—that won him widespread popularity. Nevertheless, his record was marred by sensational corruption scandals involving several close subordinates, and public security remained a major challenge.

In May 2004 the federal attorney general initiated impeachment proceedings against López Obrador, charging him with having defied a court order by authorizing the construction of a hospital access road across private property. Mexican Pres. Vicente Fox argued that his administration sought only to uphold the rule of law, but many national and international observers believed that the underlying motive was to disqualify López Obrador as a presidential candidate. After nearly one million protesters marched through downtown Mexico City in April 2005, Fox finally ended the prolonged confrontation by dropping the impeachment charge.

Early polls placed López Obrador far ahead of Fox’s protégé Felipe Calderón, but, by the date of the presidential election in July 2006, those numbers were diminished by a strong Calderón media campaign. Initial results had the two candidates in a virtual dead heat, and Calderón emerged the victor by a mere 0.56 percent of the vote. Almost immediately, tens of thousands of López Obrador supporters took to the streets to demand a recount. A partial recount failed to change the results, however, and Calderón was officially declared the winner. In response, López Obrador held a massive public ceremony in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, to inaugurate himself as the “legitimate president” of a parallel government.

In 2012 López Obrador ran again as the PRD’s candidate for the presidency. This time, according to preliminary results, he finished second to the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, the handsome former governor of the state of México, though López Obrador did finish ahead of the National Action Party (PAN) candidate, former cabinet minister Josefina Vázquez Mota. Almost immediately López Obrador alleged that there had been violations of election law by the PRI, including overspending in the campaign and vote buying. In response to the allegations, the Federal Electoral Institute ordered a recount of more than half of Mexico’s polling places, which upheld Peña Nieto’s victory.

Disenchanted with the PRD’s support for Peña Nieto’s economic initiatives, in 2014 López Obrador founded a new political party, the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional; MORENA). As the 2018 presidential election approached, López Obrador staked out a position as the party’s de facto standard bearer, trumpeting his own integrity as a bulwark against political corruption. Ever the populist and nationalist, he continued to emphasize his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Peña Nieto’s decision to open up Mexico’s energy industry to private investment.